VexVox

I'm so totally running out of things to post for Holidailies. In all my years of keeping online journals and blogs and such, I very rarely ever posted recipes. I'm not much of a cook, so why should I pretend to be some culinary authority? Tonight, though, I made a dish that seems to confound people for the simple reason that it combines two very unlikely ingredients. I learned it by some impossible name that I don't know how to pronounce. I'll just call it citrus pork chops.

Ingredients:

4 pork chops, center cut
1 cup of flour (or enough to coat the pork chops)
Salt
Pepper
2 cups of orange juice (yes, orange juice)
2 tbsp., cooking oil (at least)

Season the pork chops liberally with salt and pepper, then coat them in the flour. At this point, Alton Brown would advise you to shake off the excess flour off the chops, and so do I. Brown the pork chops in a skillet with the oil set on medium high. Once each side has been browned, lower the heat of the skillet to medium and pour in 1 1/2 cups of the orange juice. Let it simmer for a minute or two before put the heat on LOW. Yes, low. Cook 1 1/2 hours. Yes, 1 1/2 hours. Half way through the cooking time, add the remaining 1/2 cup of orange juice if it looks like too much has evaporated.

This recipe is a no-brainer, but I don't cook it often because of the long cook time. But oh — the orange juice and the flour breading and the pork chops? Very, very tasty.
 

Yes, I already did a year in review, but I've always had a soft spot for this meme, which I don't fill out too often. I think the last time I did was 2006.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?

   I released a CD.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

   Yes. Somewhat unwittingly. I toyed with the idea of resolving to release a CD but never made an official announcement. I ended up doing so anyway.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

   No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

   No.

5. What countries did you visit?

   In this economy?

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

   A decent singing voice.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

   June 24, 2008. That was the release date I scheduled for enigmatics.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

   Establishing three businesses. And yes, all three are related to the release of the CD. Do you see a pattern here?

9. What was your biggest failure?

   The CD release. I sold 10 copies directly. Made one album download sale on iTunes and quite possibly one sale at Waterloo Records. Making the CD is the easy part. Convincing people to exchange money for it is something else entirely.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
    A bad case of the runs after eating some undercooked Filipino food caused me to faint in the bathroom, and I ended up twisting my neck.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
    A Røde NT1-A microphone. Totally blows the MXL-990 out of the water.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
    California voters. I'm being sarcastic.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

    Arizona, Florida and Arkansas voters. I'm being serious.

14. Where did most of your money go?
    Citibank. Lot of good it did them.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

    Learning how equalization finally works. I may even understand multiband compression as well. And CodeIgniter. And jQuery.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?

    Anything off of MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS' self-titled EP or ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION's World World World.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

    a. happier or sadder

    b. thinner or fatter

    c. richer or poorer?

    Most definitely thinner.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
    Promotion for my CD.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

    Spurning the advances of horny guys in the Gay.com chatrooms.

20. How will did you be spending/did you spend Christmas?

    Paying $5.25 in toll fees getting lost trying to get to a party I can't say I was eager to attend.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?

    Oh, that's funny.

22. How many one-night stands?

    Zero.

23. What was your favorite TV program?
    Ace of Cakes. If there's a gay version of Geof, I'd probably be dating him. And yes, Katherine is from Planet Awesome.
    
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

    Austin drivers on the whole. I can't count the times I lost my voice in rush-hour traffic.

25. What was the best book you read?
    The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

    It's a draw between Matt Alber, Ann Sally's Brand-New Orleans, and Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

27. What did you want and get?

    A Røde NT1-A microphone and a pair of KRK Rokit Power 5 monitor speakers.

28. What did you want and not get?

    The hot guy who uses the apartment complex gym from time to time.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

    The only thing I watched in the theaters this year is The Dark Knight, and I liked it. I'm just unwilling to call it my favorite by virtue of being my only.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

    I turned 36. I joined ASCAP and started two businesses.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

    More people buying my CD.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?

    Downgraded jean size.

33. What kept you sane?

    Not applicable.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

    Mike Doyle, who plays CSU Technician Ryan O'Hallaran on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

    Proposition 8.

36. Who did you miss?

    Gay Friend-Drinking Buddy. We're actually talking again now that he's single. His ex- had an issue with me.

37. Who was the best new person you met?

    My social circle doesn't expand much.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.

    I need to get more funky.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

    She said I heard you and you cannot sing

    I said that's nothing you should hear me play piano (Same answer I gave in 2006)

The title is a phonetic way of saying, "二千八年", or 2008 in Japanese. With Holidailies winding down, I thought I'd reprise the year in review.

The big events of 2008:

• April 2008, Launched Observant Records, Shinkyoku Advocacy and Eponymous 4 as businesses: On my birthday, I had the compulsion to join ASCAP as a songwriter and a publisher. Once I did that, I figured I may as well head down to the County Clerk's Office and register DBAs for Eponymous 4 and Observant Records. Then I opened up some bank accounts with those DBAs. Shinkyoku Advocacy didn't actually launch till May 2008, after ASCAP accepted my company name. But with these entities in place, I decided it was time to experiment with releasing an actual CD.
• May 2008, Trip to Hawai`i: My mom asked my sister in Chicago and me to come home for my dad's birthday. He had just gotten back from a doctor's appointment, where a suspicious growth on his lung was found. It would turn out to be no big deal, but at the time, we thought a small family reunion would be appropriate. My sister and I visit home, she more frequently than I, but the last time we both were there was 2003. This time, I had no diversion to Maui.
• June 2008, Release of enigmatics: The process of manufacturing a CD seems pretty straight-forward. I registered the songs and the recording with the Copyright Office. I sent a CD-R off to Mixonic for duplication. I bought a barcode from CDBaby and signed up for their digital distribution. I established an Amazon Advantage account to sell the CD. And I launched a new website. I've sold only 10 copies so far, most of them to family. While making a CD is easy, promoting the damn thing is where the real work lies. And it's weird — I really can't get behind this particular release because I don't consider it representative of what I do. So yeah, I shot myself in the foot with this one.
• August 2008, Hit weight loss plateau: A year after I started losing weight, I stopped. I've kept exercising, and I still watch what I eat — although I confess, the portions are getting slightly more generous — but the weight stopped coming off. My body figured it out, and it refuses to lose any more. I'd be more upset, but I haven't been 170 pounds in about nine years. That's still 15 pounds more than I need to be, but I'm just enjoying the fact I've already gone down one jean size and may need to go down again soon. I would like the scale to show me some new numbers, though.
• November 2008-present, Started migrating web sites to CodeIgniter: On the surface, this event looks pretty dull. Again with recoding all my websites? I seem to do that every couple of months. But the underlying code that runs my sites was hammered out in 2003, and I haven't really redesigned it since. It's gotten pretty bloated and unorganized, and it's not as flexible as it could be. Now that I'm doing more music, I'm not interested in making my code compete with the likes of Ruby on Rails or CakePHP. So I'm moving to a third-party framework. CodeIgniter seemed the most flexible for moving code to a new structure, and I'm so far impressed with the results. The Eponymous 4 official site is already using CodeIgniter.

As evidenced by most of the posts for Holidailies, I've gone down the rabbit hole once again. When I re-emerge, I may finally semi-officially reveal all the stuff I've been recording for the past three years.

In Season 4 of Project Runway, Tim Gunn visited almost-finalist Chris Marsh to see how his Fashion Week collection was coming along. After examining the strangely grotesque pieces using actual human hair, Tim compared Chris' work to the monkey house at the zoo.

When you first walk into the monkey house, the stench hits you, says Tim, but after a while, you get used to it. Chris was working in the monkey house. He had gotten used to his collection and didn't realize parts of it that reeked.

I'm sure that's what happening to me with my studio work.

I've been living with these recordings for so long, I don't have the perspective to see what needs improvement. I can hear my voice and not mind the warble of diminishing breath control, the scrape of imprecise intonation, the noises of unpracticed mic technique. It doesn't occur to me maybe a little reverb here or a bit less compression there might make a world of difference.

Familiarity breeds distress, and I don't realize just how familiar I am with this work.

These songs could be much better if I could just get out of the way.

When I make a New Year's resolution, I usually frame it in a way to guarantee success. Resolving to lose weight or to change a habit just seems too externally motivated, as if those extra pounds and that particular habit need correction to be socially normative. Instead, I'd rather enhance something I already do pretty well, especially if it's something I tend to neglect.

Back in 2000, I resolved to learn how to play bass guitar. That was a resolution I looked forward to doing. Other years, I resolved to write music, during times when I wasn't writing any. Last year, I casually resolved to release a CD. I didn't take it seriously and even forgot I made that resolution. And what should happen? I released a CD.

Yes, my resolutions tend to be creatively-inclined, and I like to think they helped spur me to do more.

I'm at the point now where I don't need to resolve to be creative. I have more than enough to keep me busy for years. So for 2009, I'm thinking about resolutions that might be significantly more challenging for me to achieve. In short, resolutions akin to losing weight or changing a habit.

I've narrowed the resolutions to a choice of three:

• Form a band
• Start dating again
• Learn to swim 

For all the work I've been doing in the studio, the songs really need to come alive with real musicians playing the parts. I've been resistant so far because I just don't know jack shite about band logistics. I'm not even sure what my own role would be. And if I form one, then what? I'm not even that great a performer.

I almost think forming a band is a more intimate relationship than dating. I "took a break" from dating back in 1999, and I've been apathetic about it ever since. I used to think if I could muster the courage to form a band, I can muster the courage to date again. Both involve finding other people, but with dating, I'm not entrusting my creative work to someone else. Trust is the lynch pin in both situations, and dating looks slightly simpler than forming a band.

In a way, these two resolutions almost have a familial theme running through them, and that's a difficult idea for me to process. My model of a family — id est, my own — isn't inspiring, and the ultimate goal in dating is to find a partner. In short to form a family, even if it's only two people. I can't say I find that appealing. The interpersonal relationships in a band, I would imagine, run on the same dynamic. And I'm no patriarch.

As for the third resolution — yes, I grew up on an island, and I don't know how to swim. Doesn't make sense. I'm thinking I might have the most fun with this resolution. It's certainly less intimidating than the other two, and it gives me an excuse to get in the water. Unless I drown. Then it would not be.

I dreamed last night I was fired from my job.

It's one of those dreams that makes total sense while you're in it, but when you wake up and go over the details, the absurdity of the dream becomes apparent. (Although the underlying theme is really not so absurd, on a very basic level.)

The dream started when I received a note from the manager of my group — not my direct manager but his boss. It was in a very business-y tone and said something about going over resources for the upcoming year. In other words, he wanted to talk to me about getting fired of laid off.

I was in my Hunter College dorm room in New York City from 1993 — the school of nursing has a dormitory — when I got the note, and I was sneaking out of some neighbor's room in just my underwear. So I had to go back to my room and get dressed. (No, I don't know why I was sneaking out of someone else's room, and I'm pretty certain it wasn't a guy's room. No, I can't explain that one either.)

 I got dressed and went down to the first floor of the dorm, which had turned into Sinclair Library on the University of Hawai`i at Manoa campus. Or something looking like Sinclair Library. In the dream, it wasn't Sinclair Library at all but my office. I was wandering some of the back offices, looking for my boss' boss, and I ran into one of the managers from another group. I jokingly asked how she felt about my getting fired, not really knowing whether that was the case. She looked pretty upset when I mentioned it, which meant she knew before I officially knew.

I eventually found my boss' boss out on a terrace, and we sat down at a table with one of those outdoor umbrellas. I asked him point blank whether I was going to get fired today. He said no — I was being laid off on Monday. I had a bit of hope when I heard the answer "no" but felt only slightly crushed to hear I was being fired anyway.

He asked me what projects I had going on, and I mentioned some of the applications I was moving over to Code Igniter. I asked him what would be the reason I was being let go, and he rattled off a laundry list of issues. In summary, I got too cocky thinking I would be secure in my position, which has no oversight and no accountability. I also let my ego get the better of me, thinking my skills were too invaluable to be expendable to the group.

I realized it was only Thursday, and I had all day Friday to get my things together. I decided just to go home — to my parents' house in Honolulu, not my apartment in Austin. It's dream time — the fact my company is located in Austin has no bearing on the fact that in the dream, it looks like Sinclair Library, is located minutes away from my parents home in Honolulu and is on the first floor of a college dormitory in New York City.

I got home, expecting that my lay-off would be inevitable given the state of the economy, and I tried to square it all away in mind. I lost a job that I had been feeling somewhat ambivalent about for a while, so aside from having to face the unemployment office again, was it really that bad? In fact, I kind of looked forward to the job search. The last time I was out of work, web development gigs dried up because the bubble in tech burst. In this recession, I still get an occassional spam from a third-party recruiter pitching my jobs with acronyms totally not listed in my résumé.

I was thinking all of that as I walked up to the garage of my parents' home. Both of them were home, and I broke the news to them.

Then I woke up.

The reality of the dream melted away to the reality of, well, reality, and I remembered my last positive review, the work I'm doing on the web-based interface, the code I'm porting to CodeIgniter. I have a pretty good reputation at work, and I can debug problems with scripts that other people in my department can't. No, I'm fairly confident my job is secure.

But after that dream, who really knows?

I'm at the point where the studio work is getting in the way of my Holidailies commitment. So why not combine the two? Here's one track I've been working on this evening.

There are many reasons I focused on composition when I studied music in college, but as I'm working through these demo recordings, perhaps one has come into greater relief.

I'm a terrible performer.

I keep saying how I'm not a singer, but the extent of my lack is apparent when I try to tackle some of my own seemingly deceptive songs. For the last two days, I've been doing battle with a song that's in 3/4 time, with a lengthy melodic phrase. The rhythm is pretty much quarter notes, but the phrase is such a length that a trained singer may find it tiresome. A no-talent such myself finds it excruciating.

I've also written songs where closed vowel sounds like "ih" and "eh" get long notes. The wider you can make your mouth, the better long notes would sound. But those vowel sounds lose their character if you open your mouth too wide.

Another song leaps from A to E-flat — the Devil's interval.

Why do I do this? Because I'm not a singer. If I sang more, I would probably stay away from scales with diminished and augmented intervals. If sang at all, I would make sure long notes were matched with open vowels, and I would keep phrase lengths manageable.

But I'm a writer. A songwriter, a composer, what have you. I'm the kind of person more interested in what a melody would sound like with diminished and augmented intervals. And as a lyric writer, I don't care if open vowels ended a phrase — I'd just want the right word to convey whatever vague mood or message I want to establish.

And so I end up creating music that I can't really perform myself.

But if I catered my writing to how I perform, would I really be engaged with compromises?

I know I should stop, but I can't. I know I have it, and I should stop to get rid of it. What is it? Ear fatigue.

Ever since I bought the monitor speakers, I've been working pretty much day in and day out, trying to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. The speakers displaced my computer speakers, which are now situated in a way to make everything I play through them sound different.

And because I've been listening and analyzing and analyzing and listening, I'm really not sure what is something is supposed to sound like. That's ear fatigue.

On the monitor speakers, every frequency is played pretty much equally, although the whole sound tends to be a bit muddy. (I get what I paid for, and while each speaker cost $135, higher end monitors cost at least $250. Each.) On the computer speakers, I get a lot of brightness from the speakers and low end from the subwoofer. On my monitor headphones, every frequency is even and clean, but on my regular headphones, the bass and treble are exaggerated into the "disco smile". Then in the car, everything gets muddy.

With all that data running around in my head, it's no wonder everything just sounds weird.

Instead of just hearing music, I'm listening for the effects of frequency ranges when I turn this knob or change this setting. And it's not just my own stuff. I'll bust out some Utada Hikaru or Neutral Milk Hotel and compare and contrast the listening experiences of each.

I really need to stop.

Or I really need a sabbatical.

I'm not inclined to stop because it will be a long time before I have another stretch of personal time. I've pretty much discovered the day job and the commute to and from drains my ability to have a decent recording session for vocals, so I must wait till the weekends. I want to improve on the stuff I recorded around this time last year, then use the weeknights to mix.

With any luck, I can start posting entire albums for real.

But tomorrow again, I soldier on, running errands when I can manage to tear myself away.

I need a haircut. I need an oil change. I have some blood work scheduled on Tuesday morning. I need to go to the bank tomorrow and again on pay day. Sometimes, I wish these things could take care of themselves.

I just got back from a gift exchange with Double-A at Musashino. I also got my sister's Christmas card in the mail. So these items need to be added to the list:

• Philip Glass, Mishima
• A vampire-themed calendar

Double-A saw Mishima listed as part of my Kronos Re-Acquisition Project, an effort to reacquire CDs of Kronos Quartet albums I never upgraded to CD or had sold for cash in the past. That pretty much leaves Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind and Tan Dun's Ghost Opera. I'm saving Ghost Opera for last because it's not really a great piece.

The calendar makes mention of a "Day Walker", an idea I once described to her for a novel I've been trying to write since the early '90s. If I haven't gotten it done by now, there's little chance of it happening. (I have a novel on Lulu.com, by the way.)

My sister sent cash, serendipitously in the amount I withdrew from the bank yesterday to pay for tonight's dinner. I like how that balances itself out.

Should I bother mentioning the $310 pair of monitor speakers I bought on Friday? By its proximity to Christmas — the day after, specifically — the purchase date would indicate yet another exorbiant gift to myself. No, I think at this point, I'm considering it a business expenditure. They will certainly be considered as such at tax time.

I went with the KRK Rokit Power 5, which gets pretty good reviews despite its relative cheap price. I tried to mix one of my original song on them, but I didn't get results that really satisfied me. I think it's more a problem with the song's arrangements than the speakers themselves. So I worked on a SUPERCAR cover instead, and when I got through it, I was encouraged how well the mix sounded when I switch to my computer speakers.

But all that working put a pinch in my elbow — Pac Man elbow of lore — so working today took a bit more effort. Maybe tomorrow I should work on vocals. That's what I'm supposed to be doing with my vacation time anyway.

Oh, and here's the SUPERCAR cover: